...a photoBook is an autonomous art form, comparable with a piece of sculpture, a play or a film. The photographs lose their own photographic character as things 'in themselves' and become parts, translated into printing ink, of a dramatic event called a book...
- Dutch photography critic Ralph Prins

maandag 28 oktober 2013

Jurriaan Schrofer was one of the trend setting graphic designers of the 1950s and ‘60s. Widely recognised for his photography books, the Dutch designer also created house styles, stamps, magazines, advertisements and typefaces. Schrofer played the role of adviser, art director, teacher, author and board member in the art world. This informative monograph provides a fascinating overview of his work, ideas and adventurous career.

Amsterdam, 1957. Gilt decorative cloth, [64]pp. of text, ills., plates, drawings. Commemmorates the 75th anniversary of the first dutch factory to produce female & children's overcoats, 1882-1957, being a compilation of historical events through the period, incl. the development and change of fashion.

S.I. [IJmuiden], Koninklijke Nederlandsche Hoogovens en Staalfabrieken, 1958. Small folio, original cloth with cover title in bold blue typography. 80pp. of dutch descriptive text in verse numerous monochrome plates of which some double page, some coloured, technical drawings and cartoons, list of photographs at very end. Dutch language photo-impression of a big dutch steelmanufacturer Hoogovens (nowadays merged with Corus, a british steelmanufacturer) at IJmuiden City, The Netherlands. Includes rather extensive informative text with notes on employed steelworkers. Album presented to Arnold Hugo Ingenhousz, Chairman of the Board of Directors, on the occasion of his departure from office after 40 years of service. See for Fire beside the Sea ...

KANDO, ATA / CORNELIUS, VIOLETTE - Hongarije 1956

Amsterdam, Bezige Bij, 1957. First edition. Softcover. 21 x 25 cm. These images where made between 10-20 november 1956 . This book was comissioned by the organisation "Nationaal Comité Hulpverlening Hongaarse volk". to aid the Hungarian people. B/W photographs featuring Hungarian refugees, men, women and children upon the arrival at the Austrian-Hungarian border, with citations from poems in a variety of languages as hebrew, japanese german, english, french, hungarian.

ALPHEN, OSCAR, VAN / MORRIEN, ADRIAAN - Kinderen in de Grote Stad

Den Haag, Uitgeverij Oisterwijk, 1958. first edition. Hardcover including dustjacket. 27 X 26 x 15. Design Jurriaan Schrofer.(PBC 96, 97) A wonderful book depicting children in the big city. A book contemporary of Doisneauâ€™s Gosses de Paris (1956) and of which many pictures are reminiscent of Helen Levitt (Ways of seeing is from 1965). Certainly one of the most exiting Dutch photography books in the mid fifties. See for Children in the Big City ...

Den Haag, Staatsbedrijf der PTT, 1962. First edition. Softcover. 24,5 x 19,5. Very nice company photo book from the PTT (Dutch Postal Services) on the theme of Connecting, with photographs by Violette Cornelius, Eddy Posthuma de Boer and Paul Huf and texts by Jan G. Elburg, designed by Jurriaan Schrofer.

Wormerveer, Meijer, 1960. Small folio, original boards, cover title. Original protective clearview dustjacket. 75pp. of text and numerous monochrome plates after photographs by Cas Oorthuys, 1 full page coloured illustration of a flowering cotton plant after a drawing by MELLE, summaries in english, french and german, descriptions to plates and illustrations in english, french and german at very end, illustrated endpapers. WITH manufacturer's presentation letter to the album loosely inserted. Dutch language publication in which the centenary of mechanized weaving, from raw material to finished product, 1860-1960, implemented by a foremost dutch Textile manufacturer Royal Nijverdal-Ten Cate, Almelo, Overijssel Province.

Dutch photographer and filmmaker Ed van der Elsken relocated to Paris in 1950. There he found a bohemian group, closely following and photographing their everyday movements, intertwining fiction and reality in a new genre of photography book. The reconstruction of this process from unpublished documents – contact prints, sketches, maps – illuminates not only the nihilist worldview of the young people he befriends but also the cinematographic layout of the book, ‘Love on the Left Bank’.

A fiction extracted from these documents confronts the original narrative that Van der Elsken established in the book, a visual story accompanied by a text by Tamara Berghmans.

“Ed van der Elsken was the best known internationally of the Dutch photographers of the 1950s and 60s due in no small measure to this book, which took the genre of the Dutch photonovel to a new level, and announced the presence in Europe of a stream-of-consciousness photographer on a par with William Klein… The book remains an important and influential early example of a genre that has become increasingly popular in the late 20th century—the diaristic mode” (Parr & Badger I:245). Van der Elsken’s images of “artists, addicts, deadbeats, would-be intellectuals and dealers who… lived for the moment” were shaped into his first work at the urging of Edward Steichen, who featured the young photographer in a landmark 1953 MoMA exhibit. His “blend of informal photojournalism and diaristic note-taking set a precedent for the sort of engaged personal book works that Larry Clark and Nan Goldin would make decades later” (Roth, 146). “The book’s layout accentuates the various photographic methods” used by van der Elskin in joining this intimate photonovel to the electrifying urban photo-essays of his generation (Open Book, 21).

Ed van der Elsken’s classic photo-novel Love on the Left Bank(1954) has just been reissued. Singer-songwriter and artist
Patti Smith recalls her first encounter with the book—and with the woman whose image runs through it.